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Articles and Writings
An interview with Marshall Rosenberg, from The Buddhist Society.
The process that you teach and work with is called Nonviolent
Communication, and from what I understand it seems to have a shared
philosophy with Buddhism.
Well, I’ve often expressed it this way - that if the Buddha ever came
back to life and got himself a lawyer he could get me good because I’ve
stolen a lot of his stuff. I work a lot with Buddhist groups around the
world who see our training as very much in harmony with their
understanding of Buddhism. It resonates very well. I talk about how
important it is to be clear about what you would like but not to get
addicted to your strategies or your requests, not to set your objectives
in order to get your way. Much of that I got from reading Buddhist texts
and from people I know who are studying the process.
You talk about not getting addicted to certain strategies. Can you
elaborate on that?
In our training we talk about how important it is firstly to let
people know what’s alive within you, and what your feelings and needs are
and how to be honest without criticising, blaming or judging another
person. Next we say, if what’s going on in you is painful in relationship
to somebody, then be clear about what they could do to contribute to your
well being. State very clearly what you want, but don’t get addicted to
that being your objective. Keep in mind that the objective always needs to
be to create a quality of connection between you and the other person, a
quality that allows everyone’s needs to get met through compassionate
giving. That’s the objective. Now part of that is to say what you would
like, but if you get addicted to that, the other person will think you
have a single minded purpose just to get what you want. So that quality of
connection is going to be hard to find.
So staying in the present moment is important when having that
conversation with someone?
The training requires it. Even if you’re talking about the past, about
why someone was late for a meeting yesterday, the observation that’s
important is what I’m feeling right now. And right now, what would I like
the person I’m speaking with to do. No matter what that person says to us,
the training shows us how to connect with what’s alive in that person
right now. The training helps us to stay in the moment.
And presumably helps us to listen more deeply to that person.
Exactly. What is that person feeling and needing right now? Though
unfortunately most of the people on our planet haven’t been taught to
speak this way, so what they usually give is judgments and criticisms.
What the training does is to help us get to the root of why this is coming
out of that person.
Is it more difficult to have this type of conversation with someone who
isn’t familiar with the process?
Of course. If that person has no ability to talk about what’s alive in
them, and only knows how to tell you what’s wrong with you, it’s
difficult. For 8,000 years people have been learning how to participate in
domination structures in which a few people dominate many, something that
Nonviolent Communication doesn’t advocate. So what we teach people is how
to connect with anyone else on the planet whether they know this language
or not.
The work that you do isn’t just with peace activists or political
groups, you also work in corporate and business circles.
We work with everyone - business executives, police centres, street
gangs, warring political parties from Rwanda, Israel, Palestine, Serbia.
It’s one of the fun things about the training - we work with such a wide
variety of people.
Is it difficult to sustain your inspiration in the face of calamities
such as the Rwanda massacres and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
The inspiration isn’t difficult, but sometimes the economics are. Ten
years ago we took a group of Israelis and Palestinians to Switzerland, a
neutral territory where we hoped to achieve some good work, but ten years
later the political situation still makes it difficult for the
Palestinians to earn a living in thier own country. They still have the
energy to work towards peace but not the ability to sustain themselves
economically, so the people we were working with often had no choice but
to leave the country.
Is it hard for people to put aside politics when they go through the
processes that you advocate?
It’s very important to us that they not put politics aside. We want
people to work simultaneously at three levels. We want them to work within
themselves, to really look at their own spirituality, and we also want
them to know how to manifest it in personal relationships. But we also
want them to be sophisticated about the role that structures play in
either supporting or not supporting our spirituality. If the political
structures are not supporting us and we just withdraw and work on
ourselves, that’s what some people call translative spirituality. It helps
us to live more calmly in the world as it is, but it doesn’t give us
energy to transform the world. So we want people who have, as Ken Wilbur
calls it, a transformative spirituality.
A spirituality of engagement?
I haven’t heard it put like that, but I’m sure we’re talking about the
same thing. It’s a division that you see in all religions - some people
take the opportunity to disengage in order to create a sacred world within
themselves, but then there are those who say that’s a tragic form of
spirituality if it enables us to live in the world just as it is.
Can you describe what happens when you first get people into a room and
start the process of Nonviolent Communication?
Pretty much straight away I ask them to think of somebody who’s
behaving in a way that’s not fulfilling their needs. Then I ask them to
tell me what it is this person does, and I can bet that almost anywhere I
am on the planet somebody in the group is going to say ‘I have a child,
and when I ask them to do something they say no.’ Or someone’s partner
isn’t spending enough time with them, or else it’s their boss that’s
telling them something they don’t like. Or depending on the country it
might be a different tribe that’s behaving in a threatening way. So
whatever is real to that person, we start showing them how Nonviolent
Communication would apply in that situation.
Do you notice a change in peoples faces at the end of the process?
Oh yes, because most of our communication, I think about 80 or 90
percent is non-verbal. When people are thinking in a way that’s in harmony
with our process, you can see it. It’s very obvious. On the other hand the
language that most people are engaged in is physically damaging to your
body. There’s a high correlation between what in medical terms is called
‘Type A’ thinking and heart disease. It’s a thinking that’s alienated from
what’s alive in us, a language that was developed originally to maintain
those domination structures on the planet. But more enlightened people
have a language of life in them, they see how good it feels to wonder
moment by moment, ‘what can I do to make life more wonderful for myself
and others?’ But language itself can be a problem. The verb ‘to be’ is
built into English, and it plays a part in creating a language of
judgment. People are things, they are right or wrong, they are competent
or incompetent, they are attractive or ugly. The verb to be is connected
to violence in many ways, and studies have shown that the more a society
is trained in this verb, the more violent it will be.
But it’s a hard word not to use.
When I was in Malaysia I was working with a particular group whose
language didn’t have the verb ‘to be’. It didn’t exist. My interpretor
tried to explain that he’d have a hard time translating for me, especially
if I wanted to say ‘you are’ or ‘he is’. I thought how incredible this
was, and how hard it would be not to use those words. So I asked him how
he might translate if I wanted to say ‘that man is selfish’. ‘Oh’, he
said, ‘that would be hard, because we don’t think that way. But if I did
have to translate, it would sound something like: Marshall sees you taking
care of your needs, but not the needs of others. He would like you to take
care of the needs of others as well.’ So I smiled and thought well, that’s
exactly what I’m here to teach people.
The Centre for Nonviolent Communication is a global organisation that helps people connect compassionately with themselves and each other through a process created by Marshall Rosenberg.
Buddhist Library and Meditation Centre
www.buddhistlibrary.org.au